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www.forbes.com_technology 2015 04796.txt.txt

#China's Climate Pledge Will Include New Commitment To Forests Look for China to make new investments in forestry and deeper cuts in carbon intensity when it delivers its tardy climate pledge to the United nations oon, a Chinese official said in Chicago Tuesday. When Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Obama signed a climate agreement last November, China pledged to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and to increase its use of non-fossil-fuel energy sources to 20 percent. But that was only half of China climate strategy, said Zou Ji, deputy director general of China National Center for Climate change Strategy and International Cooperation, at a U s.-China Forum Tuesday at the University of Chicago. e have announced two targets already: one is a peaking year around 2030nd we will make our effort to make it happen as early as possiblend the other one is the share of non-fossil-fuel energy, Zou said. he other two, we are working very hard for the moment. hose two, according to Zou, will be: 1. Deeper reductions in carbon intensity. Carbon intensity is a measure of carbon emissions per dollar of gross domestic product, a metric that allows China to demonstrate movement away from carbon-emitting fuels even as total emissions continue to rise with economic growth. At the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009, China pledged to reduce carbon intensity 40-45 percent by 2020. China has submitted not emissions data to the UN since 2005, but on Tuesday, Madame Fu Ying, chairperson of the foreign affairs committee of China National People Congress, said China had reduced already carbon intensity 33.8 percent by 2014.2. Greater carbon sink from forestry. Expect China to expand forests in a land that has been deforested for millennia and to tinker with existing forests so they more effectively capture atmospheric carbon. China pledged in 2009 to expand its forests by 40 million hectares and forest-stock volume by 1. 3 billion cubic meters by 2020. According to the World bank, China forest cover has increased since then from 21.7 percent of land area in 2009 to 22.6 percent in 2012, the most recent year for which the bank has data. China reforestation program was ambitious even before the Copenhagen summit, but some observers have questioned its long-term success because China has relied on fast-growing species that are nonnative and unlikely to thrive. All four goals will be included in China ntended Nationally Determined Contribution or INDC, the pledge submitted to the United nations Framework Convention on Climate change ahead of the UN December summit in Paris, Zou said. Chinese officials had promised the pledge would be submitted in the first quarter of 2015, but it has appeared not yet in the UN portal t

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